Wedding Videographer in Puerto Vallarta and Punta Mita

I'm Xavier Magaña, a documentary wedding filmmaker based in Cancún, and I travel from there for weddings across Mexico.

I have been to Banderas Bay three times. Twice on vacation. The third time I was hired by an agency to photograph the bay in October 2015, right after Hurricane Patricia, the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, which had been forecast to hit hard and in the end largely spared it. That assignment took me around the bay, inside the private peninsula at Punta Mita and up the coast to Sayulita, and the photographs on this page are mine, from those two days.

What I have not done is film a wedding here, and I am not going to write this page as though I have.

What I do every week is film resort weddings on the Caribbean side. Most weddings around this bay happen at resorts too, so that part of the work carries over: the coordinator, the vendor fee, the room block, the curfew. What I can tell you about the place itself comes from having been there.

The sun goes down over the water here, and the size of the bay decides the angle. This is the west coast of Mexico, so the sunsets happen over the sea, and they are spectacular. The catch is that Banderas Bay is enormous. A resort whose beach faces roughly south, as much of the north shore of the bay does, gets the sunset off to one side of the beach rather than straight ahead. In the center of Puerto Vallarta the sun goes down more or less in front of you, and at Punta Mita it does too. Ask which way your ceremony site actually faces before anyone fixes a ceremony time.

The mornings are the reverse. The sun comes up behind the mountains, over land, which is why the photograph of the Nuevo Vallarta marina on this page, pink as it is, was taken at first light and not at sunset.

Punta Mita is a private peninsula, and getting in is part of the plan. At the northern tip of the bay, the Punta Mita development covers some 1,500 acres: the Four Seasons and the St. Regis, plus private residential communities, all behind a gate. Outside vendors, a videographer included, need clearance arranged in advance through the couple's coordinator. I have been inside it on that 2015 assignment, and it is a different world from the town: golf on the cliffs and resort gardens rather than streets. The garden at the top of this page is the St. Regis.

Most weddings here happen at resorts, so the vendor fee conversation is the same one. The all-inclusives charge outside vendors a fee, which a local planning company puts at $500 to $1,000. What I do at resorts is stay on the property, inside the block of rooms already reserved for the wedding, and ask that the fee be waived on that basis. I am not going to promise you it always works, because the answer belongs to each property, but it is worth asking before you sign. Private villas and the boat-access coves work differently, usually through the couple's own planner.

The curfew is close to universal. Amplified music typically stops at 10 or 11 PM across the region, and in the Conchas Chinas neighborhood of Puerto Vallarta the 11 PM limit is set by ordinance. Confirm the exact hour for your venue in writing, because it decides how much of the party exists on film.

"Virtually immune to hurricanes" is marketing. You will read that the shape of the bay protects it. Hurricane season on this coast runs from mid-May through November, with the peak from August to October, and in October 2023 Hurricane Lidia made landfall as a Category 4 about 65 kilometers southwest of Puerto Vallarta. My own assignment here in 2015 was the other side of the same coin: Hurricane Patricia, the most intense ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, was forecast to hit hard, weakened before making landfall well south of the bay, and largely spared it. Both things happen. The dry season, roughly December through April, is the safe window; the rain from June into October tends to come as short bursts in the evening, which is exactly when a reception is happening.

The boat-access coves are one operator's world. Las Caletas and Majahuitas are reached only by water and are run through a single operator that controls the transport, the catering and the schedule. An outside videographer can work there, but the equipment, the timing and the light all follow one boat's timetable.

Drone is a permit question, not an assumption. Drones in Mexico are regulated nationally by AFAC: registration between 250 grams and 2 kilos, visual line of sight, and a five nautical mile buffer from aerodromes. None of the resorts here publishes a drone policy, so I plan a wedding assuming no drone and treat it as a bonus if a venue clears it in writing.